Pain Behind the Release of Palestinian Prisoners

While I am in support of measures that both Israelis and Palestinians try to take to move peace talks forward, I was shocked to read about Muqdad Salah’s “struggle” to start his life anew after being released from an Israeli prison.

Considering his brutal killing of an elderly Holocaust survivor, I couldn’t help but cringe at Mr. Salah’s complaints. After what he did, it’s hard to sympathize with his boredom in not being able to leave his immediate area, all while the Palestinian Authority is paying him generously and helping him start a family with expensive in vitro fertilization treatments.

Serious peace is only possible with major sacrifices on both sides. Yet I yearn to understand how releasing and supporting convicted and confessed murderers lead to such a goal.

EMILY LOUBATON Brooklyn, March 30, 2014

To the Editor:

The release of killers in the name of an elusive peace process is a triple insult: It negates the justice won for their victims, it reduces the lives lost to mere pawns on the Mideast chessboard, and it inflicts further pain on families already torn by terrorism. My nephew Koby Mandell, 13, was killed more than a decade ago, when he and a friend, Josef Ish-Ran, were stoned to death by murderous cowards in a cave in the West Bank.

My family is grateful that his murderers were never found. We know that if found and convicted, they would eventually be part of some prisoner release, a betrayal of the broken bodies of young boys. Every time there is a release of terrorists, we grieve for those families unlucky enough to see the killers of their loved ones cheered and celebrated.

NANCY M. LEDERMAN New York, March 30, 2014

To the Editor:

You tread so carefully on the story of Muqdad Salah that you pass over the most important question of all: Why do Palestinians insist on treating Mr. Salah, who admitted to killing an elderly Holocaust survivor, apparently as he slept, as a national hero?

In what sense does the murder of an innocent civilian constitute a legitimate act of protest?

DANIEL REIFMAN Yad Binyamin, Israel, March 30, 2014

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Pain Behind the Release of Palestinian Prisoners. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe